11

I have the following in my .zshrc for case-insensitive tab completion. I encountered a situation where the tab completion fails, and I can't figure out why.

autoload -U compinit && compinit

zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list '' 'm:{[:lower:][:upper:]}={[:upper:][:lower:]}' '+l:|=* r:|=*'


$ ls
Elephant/ ElephantExample/

$ cd ex[TAB]  # completion doesn't do anything here
$ cd x[TAB]   # completion works as expected --> ElephantExample/
$ cd E[TAB]   # completion works as expected --> Elephant
$ cd e[TAB]   # completion works as expected --> Elephant

Can someone help explain this to me? Is this a bug with zsh?

EDIT: I'm using "zsh 5.0.7 (x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0)"

4
  • try zsh -f then running run compinit, add the zstyle, then try.
    – llua
    Apr 22, 2015 at 1:01
  • @llua That will spawn a new subshell and not load any .zshrc correct? Just tried it and I get the same results.
    – Russell
    Apr 22, 2015 at 1:33
  • it spawns a new zsh process, not a subshell.
    – llua
    Apr 22, 2015 at 3:02
  • Completing x[TAB] to ElephantExample/ is not what I would expect and not what happens in any of my experiments. If you want anything to match at the start of the line, you need something like zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list '' 'b:=* m:{[:lower:][:upper:]}={[:upper:][:lower:]}'
    – okapi
    Nov 11, 2019 at 11:34

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
11

Changing the style to: 

 zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list '' 'm:{[:lower:][:upper:]}={[:upper:][:lower:]}' \
  '+l:|?=** r:|?=**'

Would allow ex<tab> to expand to ElephantExample, but there may be undesired side effects.

3
  • 1
    Thank you, could you point out what possible side effects might arise? The docs weren't too helpful for me. EDIT: I see... x<tab> now expands to xElephant rather than ElephantExample
    – Russell
    Apr 22, 2015 at 16:58
  • The _approximate or _correct completers may be a better way of solving the problem, but anyway; it isn't a bug in zsh.
    – llua
    Apr 22, 2015 at 19:43
  • 1
    I found one undesirable side effect. Here is an example: cd ~/hel<tab> results in cd ~~/ when there is no matching directory.
    – aharris88
    Sep 22, 2016 at 0:00

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